TIME AND CHANGE 



be fifty thousand years or more since the great ice* 

 sheet left us. Where protected by a thin coat of soil, 

 its scratches and grooves upon the surface rock are 

 about as fresh and distinct as you may see them 

 made in Alaska at the present time. Where the 

 rock is exposed, they have weathered out, one eighth 

 of an inch probably having been worn away. The 

 drifting of the withered leaves of autumn, or of the 

 snows of winter over them, it really seems, would 

 have done as much in that stretch of time. Then try 

 to fancy the eternity it has taken the subaerial ele 

 ments to cut thousands of feet through this hard 

 Catskill sandstone ! No, the evolution of the land 

 scape, the evolution of the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms, the evolution of the suns and planets, 

 involve a process so slow, and on such a scale, that 

 it is quite unthinkable. How long it took evolution 

 to bridge the chasm between the vertebrate and the 

 invertebrate, between the fish and the frog, between 

 the frog and the reptile, between the reptile and the 

 mammal, or between the lowest mammal and the 

 highest, who can guess? 



But the gulf has been passed, and here we are in 

 this teeming world of life and beauty, with a terrible 

 past behind us, but a brighter and brighter future 

 before us. 



